1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method, system, and article of manufacture for managing encryption for volumes in storage pools.
2. Description of the Related Art
A storage manager server manages the backup and archival of data on various client systems and provides a repository for information on the archived data. A storage management server may store data objects on volumes which are grouped in storage pools, and use a database to track information about the stored data and their storage pools. After data objects have been stored, the storage management server may copy or move the data objects within volumes in the same storage pool or to volumes in other storage pools. Data volumes and the server's database may be exported to removable media and taken offsite to ensure multiple distributed copies of the data and the database for disaster recovery.
The data volumes associated with storage pools may be encrypted in a storage media to protect the data from unauthorized access. Data encryption is especially useful for business that store personal data on their customers. Recent government regulations place requirements and legal obligations about companies storing personal data to report any loss of storage media containing personal information which was not encrypted. Typically, the client application determine which data volumes to encrypt and manage the encryption keys used to encrypt and decrypt the data volumes. In certain implementations, encryption operations may be offloaded to another device.